Category: Tech news

Most of the TechCrunch team has converged in New York City in advance of our annual Disrupt NY conference. So in this episode of CrunchWeek, we’re out of the TCTV studio and in a room at the historic New Yorker hotel, adjacent to where the Disrupt NY Hackathon is set to begin in less than 24 hours. If you pay close attention, you might just sense the spirit of former New Yorker resident… Read More

Foursquare is ripping several features, including its vaunted “check-in” button, out of its flagship app and putting them in a new app called Swam. The bold repositioning got a lot of attention when it was announced Thursday, but there’s been little talk about the crucial steps Foursquare is taking to sell the remake to its […]

 Good morrow, Bluffkin! How dost thou find thouself this good day? Not afraid of robots? You should be! Our first robots of the day are Avidbots, a swarming cleaning team that can fix messy floors or suck you up and turn you into pink slurry. Huzzah! Read More

 Square and Box would seem to be the very epitome of every startup founder’s dream of reaching the pinnacle of entrepreneurial success. Take a kernel of an idea and turn it into a massive, multi-billion-dollar company that publicly debuts in an IPO. For the founders involved, the exhilaration and elation of that drive to the top must be deeply palpable, and at times it probably seems as though… Read More

 MyFitnessPal, a nutrition and fitness startup that says it now has more than 50 million registered users, is announcing the last big piece in its international expansion.

The company launched its first international apps back in June of last year, and this week, it released versions in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Co-founder Mike Lee told me that this brings the total to 14 languages. Read More

Having just returned from New Mexico and finally washed all of the dirt out of my various body orifices, I chat with Peter Rubin and Laura Hudson about my adventures watching people excavate Atari games out of an old landfill on this week’s Game|Life Podcast.

 Bill Gates sold 4.6 million Microsoft shares recently, an SEC filing released today indicates. That action lowered his holdings to 330,141,164 shares in the company. Former CEO Steve Ballmer owns 333,252,990 shares.

The sale therefore dipping Gates’ holdings under those of Ballmer, the second CEO of the company. Read More

 At a time when Silicon Valley is facing increasing scrutiny over the treatment of women in technology, there emerges a website called Codebabes.com, where, as you may have already heard, involves women stripping as you learn to code and pass online tests. Yes, seriously.

People have tried it and posted their results.

To which I have to say only this: what in the actual f@ck. Read More

 Gillmor Gang – John Taschek, Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today. Click here for live chat Read More

 Chris Cox helped invent News Feed and devised Facebook’s “Social By Design” strategy, so now the company is recognizing his critical contributions by promoting the VP Of Product to Chief Product Officer. The new title won’t come with any organizational change, but cements the 31-year-old Cox as a leader of Facebook alongside COO Sheryl Sandberg. Mark Zuckerberg delivered the news to the company… Read More

 Managing child support payments sucks. Even when divorces are amicable, the process of figuring out who pays for what when it comes to raising a child can be devastatingly difficult.

Looking to make the process just a little bit easier, Sheri Atwood, a former executive at Symantec and the founder of Ittavi, has raised $1.1 million for SupportPay, a child support payment management service. Read More

 Apple has acquired LuxVue Technology, a stealthy company that had been working on micro-LED, screen technologies, we’ve heard from sources close to the transaction. The company had raised $43 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, iD Ventures America and others. Apple has given us a statement which reads “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss… Read More

The Air Force is eying a new kind of wireless network. Hoping to improve the way its planes communicate in hostile environments, the aerial branch of the U.S. Armed Forces is sharing $2.7 million with computer science researchers at the University at Buffalo who will spend the next four years developing software that can make […]

 News was flowing this week, as HTC launched a new Spotify partnership alongside the ultra-premium HTC One M8 Harman/Kardon edition. Meanwhile, we took a closer look at the Lumafit health tracker, and as would be expected, we’re all getting geared up for TC Disrupt NY next week. Read More

 Welcome to sunny New York City, where people wear jackets to parties and time is of the essence! As you can probably guess, our whole team is here for the Disrupt NY conference at the Manhattan Center. We’re really excited about this year’s lineup, which includes Marissa Mayer, Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe, Sophia Amoruso and Mike Judge among others. Read More